Thursday, November 25, 2010

Well, here we are, the day I thought would never come, or the day I knew would sneak up on me before I could get ready for it. Either way, it's finally Thanksgiving, and that means the beginning of the Christmas sharity season. As I've done now for six years (it only seems like forever), I kick off the season with my favorite Thanksgiving song, Thanksgiving Day Parade by Spencer Ross (Columbia 4-41532 7" 45 RPM single, Mono, 1960). I re-recorded my single this year to see if i could get a little better sound out of it (as I did with many, many of my old shares this year. You'll see...). I started using a great little program called ClickRepair this year, which does a really, really good job of, umm, removing clicks (more on that later). To this day, I don't know anything else about Spencer Ross, so maybe it's high time I did a little serious checking. Hmmm, according to this article in the Billboard archives (more on those later, too...), Spencer Ross was a pseudonym for someone named Bob Mersey. The flip side of this record, Tracy's Theme, was the 'hit', this side seems to have disappeared until I found it. And Spencer Ross disappeared, too, although that article mentions a follow-up coming soon on a different label. All these years and I never bothered to look that up... Anyhow, I've also got a couple of new tracks this year for you that I'm throwing into the download as well, just to make it worth your while. First up is The Pete King Orchestra And Chorale (whose Christmas LP is a big favorite around these parts) with Bless This House from Songs To Celebrate (Kapp KS-3284, 1962, Stereo). I shared another track from that LP with you back during Christmas In July (and August and September...), so the LP may sound familiar to you. Next up is a children's ditty called Timothy Turkey performed by Rosemarie Jun & Robert Spiro from the LP Children Sing Around The Year (Decca DL 4406, 1963, Mono). Again, you first saw a track from this LP back in August as part of Christmas In July (and August and September). OK, that's three tracks, but you also get two tracks that I shared out new last year for Thanksgiving, bringing the total here to 5. Not bad for the first share of the year. Those two tracks are The Big Clown Balloons, performed by The Merrill Stanton Voices from the LP Meredith Willson's Here's Love (Columbia Special Products CSRP 8899, 1963, Stereo) and Thanksgiving Day, from the LP Hits From The Gang Shows (Fontanta 680932TL TFL.5104, Mono). credited to Ken Jones. Look at me, I've rambled on for an hour about five measly tracks. How am I ever going to get through the season? OK, now to the downloads. I know many of you hate RapidShare. So I'm going to try a couple of other download services this year, all of the in parallel for as long as I can keep it up. RapidShare is still my default sharing site, mostly because I have a pre-paid membership which makes it really easy to use, but that's of no use to you if you can't download my shares. There are three links to the download below, get it from wherever you feel is easiest.